The
advancement of high-efficiency luminescent and thermally stable
organometallic complexes has offered opportunities for the commercialization
of metal phosphors for fabricating organic light-emitting devices
(OLEDs). Since the first report on the potential use of iridium(III)
and platinum(II) complexes for applications in OLEDs in the late 1990s,
extensive efforts have been made by researchers on the development
of various heavy metal-containing compounds with rich photophysical
and luminescence properties and the engineering of device architectures
to improve device efficiencies. Apart from the more well-studied iridium(III)
and platinum(II) complexes, complexes of gold(III) recently have demonstrated
their capabilities to serve as phosphorescent or thermally stimulated
delayed phosphorescent or thermally activated delayed fluorescent
emitters, and their promising performances in OLEDs have attracted
growing interest in the past decade. Nowadays, complexes of gold(III)
with emission energies ranging from sky-blue to near-infrared with
high electroluminescence performances have been obtained. In addition,
high-efficiency vacuum-deposited and solution-processed OLEDs with
benchmark efficiencies comparable to those of the iridium(III) and
platinum(II) complexes have been realized. This Focus Review summarizes
the development of various series of luminescent gold(III) complexes
to date and highlights important milestones in the development and
advancement of gold(III)-based OLEDs. Focus will be made on the molecular
design strategies for gold(III) emitters for application as dopants
in OLEDs, including those fabricated by vacuum-deposition and solution-processing
techniques.